Season 4, Episode 14: The challenges of building apps for kids (with Niels Hoven)
Dec 4, 2024
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Niels Hoven, the CEO and founder of Mentava, discusses the nuances of creating educational apps for young learners. He dives into the design challenges for both children and parents, emphasizing the need for intuitive interfaces and meaningful feedback. Niels also tackles monetization hurdles and price sensitivity in the edu-tech space. Plus, he shares the exciting story behind Mentava's unexpected launch, showcasing how controversy can surprisingly drive engagement and validation. Tune in for valuable insights on transforming education through technology!
Building apps for children requires intuitive design that accommodates their developmental needs and limited prior experience with technology.
Feedback from parents plays a crucial role in refining educational apps, addressing challenges, and enhancing the learning experience for kids.
Mentava's growth strategy emphasizes community engagement and organic referrals, highlighting the importance of user experience in driving app adoption.
Deep dives
The Vision of Mentava
Mentava aims to transform the educational landscape by ensuring that every child has the opportunity to reach their full potential. The app focuses on teaching kids to read from as young as two years old, setting a strong foundation for accelerated learning throughout their academic careers. This initiative is born out of a recognition that modern education often prioritizes closing achievement gaps, leaving high-achieving children without the resources or opportunities to advance. By creating an engaging platform for early literacy, Mentava seeks to empower children to take charge of their learning journey.
Addressing Educational Inequities
The podcast discusses a troubling trend in education where accelerated learning programs are being dismantled across the country, such as gifted programs and merit-based admissions to prestigious schools. This shift has sparked a wider conversation about the impact on students who are ready for more challenging material, as many are left unchallenged and disengaged. This movement away from meritocracy is believed to be detrimental, particularly for high-achieving students who thrive in enriched learning environments. Mentava's mission is to counteract this through an app that encourages self-paced learning and nurtures the unique potential of every child.
Design Challenges for Young Learners
Building an app for young children necessitates addressing extensive design challenges that accommodate varying developmental needs. The user interface must be simple and intuitive so that children can navigate it without adult assistance, as they struggle with attention spans and fine motor skills. The podcast highlights unique strategies, such as providing immediate feedback through interactive activities, which not only enhances engagement but also helps cement learning concepts. Moreover, learning activities are designed to be both educational and entertaining, fostering an environment where children feel encouraged to explore and learn.
Insights from User Feedback
Mentava's development relies heavily on qualitative feedback from parents and their observations of children's interaction with the app. This feedback loop helps identify teaching challenges and refine the learning experience, ensuring that instruction effectively meets children's needs. An example discussed involves recognizing when children struggle with phonics, leading to solutions like visual cues that help differentiate sounds. Such insights not only strengthen the app’s educational framework, but also enhance the overall user experience by making it adaptive to children’s developmental stages.
Growth through Community and Acceptance
The growth strategy for Mentava is rooted in community engagement and organic word-of-mouth. Early adopters play a critical role by sharing their positive experiences, which helps drive new users toward the app. The podcast details a unique launch scenario where unexpected interest generated from a backlash led to significant sign-ups before the app was fully completed, showcasing the power of social media in education technology. This early validation highlighted the pressing need for innovative education solutions, setting a strong foundation for Mentava to scale effectively in the market.
My guest on this episode of the podcast is Niels Hoven, the CEO of Mentava, a tutoring app that helps top-performing students achieve their potential. In this episode, Niels and I discuss:
The special design considerations inherent in building an app for children;
How the interface of an app needs to be adapted to users who have never used another app before;
The kinds of feedback that can be used to improve a children's product, given a lack of analytics;
The design challenges that arise when building for two audiences: children and their parents;
Price sensitivity for educational apps and whether going premium is the best option;
The limitations or constraints faced with monetization for a children's' app;
The best way to approach growth for a children's app;
How to consider user outcomes and churn;
The story of Mentava's unplanned launch.
Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:
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